December, 18th 2019 - Last month in In an unsurprising move that many have seen coming for the past few months, Google has acquired CloudSimple. Founded in 2016, CloudSimple’s primary function is to make cloud easier for companies who are looking to transform their on-prem VMware workloads to the cloud. Google had partnered with CloudSimple in July 2019, only to end up acquiring the company a few months later in November. Prior to the July partnership, Google did not provide broad support for VMware and likely felt the pressure of client demand. From an outsider’s perspective, this is just another power grab by a tech. giant looking to increase their market share in a space that was already dominated by competitors. Organizations looking for a simplified cloud platform may want to look elsewhere.
Google Acquired CloudSimple, Now What?
You could say that Google was a bit late to the party; before July 2019, Google offered little to no support for VMware. After realizing that their competitors were capitalizing in a space that they had yet to dominate, Google (ahem, “Alphabet”) does what it always does: buy out the leaders in the space. When customers resisted Google’s standard cloud offering, Google simply bought out the competition to avoid reinventing the wheel.
Prior to the acquisition by Google, CloudSimple had an identical partnership with Microsoft and Azure. Now post-acquisition, it’s unclear if CloudSimple will continue their support of Azure. Chances are, Google will eventually phase out Azure support in order to gain a larger share of the already saturated marketplace.
Similar to Amazon and Microsoft, Google’s cloud offering is a mere side dish to their main entree options. Google started as one of the first online search engines. Amazon was originally an online bookstore. Microsoft made their mark as a hardware / software company and most experts suspect they do way more SaaS than they do in IaaS. Notice a trend? None of these tech. giants are solely focused on their cloud platforms because they have other massive, revenue-generating, business arms to distract them.
Looking Beyond the CloudSimple Acquisition
In recent years, there’s been multiple reports of tech. behemoths “poaching” the business (and the personnel) of their very own clients who have shelled out millions of dollars to use their cloud services. In January 2018, Shai Wininger, co-founder of Lemonade (an insurance startup that’s built on AWS) as well as Fiverr (the world’s leading freelancer marketplace) showed his anger with Amazon’s poaching of his top talent from Lemonade. Interestingly enough, this was right around the time that Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan announced their partnership to form a new healthcare venture, Haven.
Similarly, Netflix has begun to shy away from AWS infrastructure products partially due to the competitiveness between their streaming platform and Amazon Prime Video, which has gained significant market share over the past few years.
Thirdly, in March 2019, AWS released its own version of Elasticsearch, the powerful open-source software search engine tool that’s built on AWS - a direct plundering of a business that was built using AWS cloud platform.
These stories are becoming more and more common among the tech. giants, and the poaching is likely not stopping anytime soon. So what is a smaller company looking at cloud alternatives to do?
Choosing a (different) Simple Cloud Platform
If you’re in the market for a new cloud provider, or, if you’re looking to migrate your on-prem VMware instances to the cloud, you might have some hesitations about choosing a major cloud provider, and you’re not alone. Every few weeks, it seems that there is another move by a major player in the cloud industry that reminds the rest of us that they are clearly focused on getting the most cloud revenue for the largest margin, no matter where that comes from. When you’re running a business that’s built on corporate partnerships, there’s a mutual understanding and agreement among partners against infringing on each other’s business. A simplified cloud platform like Egenera’s Xterity Cloud platform is just that: an IaaS partner in your business’s goals and achievements.
Egenera is only a cloud company and not a giant tech. company that’s heavily invested in other services. Egenera has no interests in retail, data analytics, software market share, or anything else your company has built. We are solely committed to helping you achieve success through our suite of cloud services. In the past, AWS, Azure and Google Cloud were considered the “safe destinations” for companies looking for long term infrastructure stability. But today, that has all changed as Amazon, Microsoft and Google continue to give many tech. leaders pause as to if they are the right IaaS partner.
Egenera’s Xterity Cloud platform is fully configurable to your needs, so you buy the exact resources required, and is not reliant on the closest match of a statically configured server. As a geo-locked IaaS provider Egenera customers know exactly where their data resides. Egenera also has no backdoor access customer servers like other cloud providers, no external facing APIs to mis-use, and no alternative business lines to distract us. We find our customers choose us, and stay with us because we are entirely focused on being the easiest to use, highest value, most customer focused IaaS cloud provider in the market
About Egenera
Egenera was founded in 2000 and was quickly named as one of the top 10 startups to watch in 2002. Egenera’s Xterity Cloud platform is a global public cloud offering that is built in top tier data centers with leading connectivity providers, with the mission to simplify the consumption and management of IT resources. Xterity’s simplified cloud console allows organizations to get into the cloud without certifications, developers, or system architects.
From their operations in the US, to Japan, the UK or Ireland, Egenera has established a reputation within the cloud computing industry as a leader in simplified IaaS. Egenera can help organizations large or small achieve their goals by providing 24 x 7 x 365 support and learning the individual needs of your business.
Explore a simplified cloud platform and avoid hours of headaches at Egenera.com.
